Chris Pressey

@cpressey

Chief Nonentity @ - Explorations in Programming Languages, (Techno-)Aesthetics & Advanced WTAF Studies. Opinions are my own.

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Bluesky

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Chris Pressey@cpressey· 15d

Steve Harter Crossroads COMPUTE!'s Gazette, 1987 Play online: archive.org/details/Cros... Read article: archive.org/details/1987... #c64 #commodore64 #8bit #retrogame #retrogaming #type-in #typein #videogame #softsprites

Screenshot of the intro screen to Crossroads, showing a varied assortment of the game's antagonists antagonising each other

Chris Pressey@cpressey· 22d

Untitled (perspecatorean decoreogram) (2026) #felttip #ink #marker #doodle #abstract #abstractart #sequence #panel #diagram #design #decorative #freehand #drawing

A diagram-like abstract drawing in green and grey felt tip marker pen on white printer, consisting of several panels containing shapes vaguely suggesting perspective views. Plus some grey dots and curves which look like decorations

Chris Pressey@cpressey· 24d

Factory International feat. David Hockney & Nico Muhly "David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away)" Manchester, Dec 2025-Jan 2026 #art #exhibition #closedexhibition #immersive factoryinternational.org/whats-on/dav...

Promotional still from "David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away)" showing a few figures in a large room dwarfed by many pictures of swimming pool activity

Chris Pressey@cpressey· 29d

The Pleasantries that Refuse to be Dispensed with (2025) #abstract #abstractart #contemporaryart #digitalart #doodle #gimp3 #gestural #informel

Four long, non-intersecting gestural lines with conspicuous curves in simulated black ink with an orange-y glow effect on a beige simulated woodgrain background

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Jul 11

The Apple Weather app doesn't believe that you want to know the overnight low. It believes you want to know the lowest temperature between midnight and midnight. Some designer who wasn't a meteorologist decided this was good enough

Screenshot of Apple Weather failing to tell me what the overnight low between the 17th and 18th July is predicted to be

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Jun 10

For me I think it's shades of this thing by Borges, except it's a blacklist, and was actually used in production

On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's brush hair, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Jun 5

Core Remit Stasis (2016) #digitalart #abstractart #outsiderart #experimentalart #gimp2 #plasma #gradient #freehand #glitch #glitchart #arrow #monochrome

A greyscale digital picture of some hand-drawn geometric shapes (an arrow and two squares) in thick black lines in an abstract landscape scene with pseudo-perspective constructed from gradients applied to a plasma pattern and then extracted as layers, for an unusual vaguely crystalline or geological effect.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Jun 2

North of the Hundredth Meridian (2026) #digitalart #abstract #abstractart #contemporaryart #outsiderart #gimp3 #chalk #hazy #sfumato #perlinnoise

Some lines in short curves in what might be light grey chalk along with some hazy grey cloudy forms on a dark grey background with a texture based on Perlin noise

Chris Pressey@cpressey· May 31

Chris Follows Redacted Mesh Painting 012 2026 #abstractart #contemporaryart #rectilinear #dithering #stripes #meander #colourful

A rectangular (portrait orientation) abstract painting consisting of sometimes-connected vertical and horizontal bars of colour; these are not solid colours but various narrow striping and dithering patterns; colours are generally saturated and include yellow red magenta teal and dark blue.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· May 28

Yeah I don't know quite where that preview is coming from, but I expect it means the authors of Forgejo didn't really anticipate people posting links to branch compare views on social media

The preview box for the link in the previous post, which has the title "Avoid any dangerous.", and the description "Would be: http://server/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi Apache with FastCGI."

Chris Pressey@cpressey· May 27

One wonders if the hype about Mythos is part of this strategy: now that users have become accustomed to our unsustainable subsidized pricing, how can we get them to pay [closer to] the actual cost of inference? what if we scare them about AI-assisted hacking? www.flyingpenguin.com/the-boy-that...

Quote from https://www.flyingpenguin.com/the-boy-that-cried-mythos-verification-is-collapsing-trust-in-anthropic/ : "For context on what those credits buy: Mythos Preview’s post-preview list pricing is $25 per million input tokens and $125 per million output tokens, compared to Claude Opus 4.6 at $5 input / $25 output. Mythos is five times the price of the current flagship — which is a pricing decision that is itself a capability claim Anthropic has to defend."

Chris Pressey@cpressey· May 10

THE FEELING WHEN VS Code has updated itself and there's now a "Sign In" button on the toolbar and your first thought is "It's over"

A "Sign In" button that has suddenly appeared on the toolbar on my installation of VS Code

Chris Pressey@cpressey· May 9

Yeah you know what's even weirder than UFOs though? The adjective "all-star", when it's applied to individuals. Who needs the paranormal when you have... English?

An excerpt taken from the BBC article at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c707zjg3p42o , which reads: "In several cases, the released images are so compressed, artifact-heavy, or lacking in scale/context that it is difficult to determine what is even being shown," one all-star contributor to a UFO group posted. "Some appear to be reconstructed overlays based on witness testimony rather than direct imagery of an object itself.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· May 6

Found Shadow (2026) #photography #streetphotography #abstractphotography #foundobject #urbangaze #shadowplay #yellow

Photograph of a glass advertising section of a shopfront where a poster had once been taped, at a certain time of day in the morning, at a certain time of year, casting a certain pattern of shadows when the weather is sunny

Chris Pressey@cpressey· May 2

THE FEELING WHEN you log on to LinkedIn. Every time.

“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.”
- Plato, _Phaedrus_

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Apr 27

Eugène Samuel Grasset Calendrier de La Belle Jardinière. Les Mois. Avril 1896 #calendar #april #spring #taurus #artnouveau #jungendstil #illustration

Page from a 1896 calendar with an illustration of a young woman in a dress patterned with the zodiac symbol for Taurus, holding a flowers, in a park-like setting near a pond and a stream amidst flowers and flowering trees.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Apr 19

When revisiting a write-up you did 7 years ago that you plan to use again, it sometimes helps to write a summary. So that's what I did today. Well, and I did a lot of cleaning. And I bought some shoes

# Nested Modal Transducers

- A methodology for building hierarchical state machines
in a _purely functional_ setting
(no in-place changes are made to data structures)
- At any given time, each state machine has a _configuration_,
which is a data structure consisting of:
* its _mode_ (the traditional "state indicator": one of a finite,
fixed set of labels)
* its _data_ (the "extended state", including any
counters, flags, timers, etc.)
* a collection of configurations, one for each of the
sub-machines _nested_ within this one
- When a state machine receives an _input_, it may
transition to a new configuration, and produce
zero or more _outputs_
- This is realized with a pure function called a _transducer_
with the signature:
* `(Config × Input) → (Config' × [Output])`
- The transducer for a state machine is responsible for
transitioning all of its sub-machines by calling _their_
transducers on the nested configurations
- In doing so it can intercept the input sent to the
sub-machine, and the outputs returned from the sub-machine,
and manage them as it sees fit

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Apr 5

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Supper at Emmaus 1602 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supper_... #oilpainting #oiloncanvas #historypainting #biblestory #resurrection #dudewheresyourbeard #weirdforeshortening

Colour illustration of a Bible story made by a famous painter several hundred years ago. The Wikipedia page says "Cleopas gesticulates in a perspectively-challenging extension of arms in and out of the frame of reference", which I'm pretty sure is trying to very politely say that Caravaggio got the foreshortening wrong on his hands.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Apr 5

I still don't know about cases or induction, but pleasantly surprised that it looks like we can model assumptions using just what Lome provides. Awkward af because we're in the substructural weeds (sort of reifying a sequent in equational logic?), but elegance was never a goal here.

$ cat eg/assume-discharge.ebfer
fun main() => add(1, 2)

rule pos_add(assuming(is_positive(B), assuming(is_positive(A), is_positive(add(A, B))))) =>
assuming(is_positive(B), assuming(is_positive(A), true))
rule pos_one(is_positive(1)) => true
rule pos_two(is_positive(2)) => true

rule assume(T, A) => assuming(A, T)
rule discharge(assuming(true, T)) => T

theorem
is_positive(add(1, 2)) => true
proof
is_positive(add(1, 2))
*assume(is_positive(add(1, 2)), is_positive(1))
assuming(is_positive(1), is_positive(add(1, 2)))
*assume(assuming(is_positive(1), is_positive(add(1, 2))), is_positive(2))
assuming(is_positive(2), assuming(is_positive(1), is_positive(add(1, 2))))
*pos_add(assuming(is_positive(2), assuming(is_positive(1), is_positive(add(1, 2)))))
assuming(is_positive(2), assuming(is_positive(1), true))
assuming(*pos_two(is_positive(2)), assuming(*pos_one(is_positive(1)), true))
assuming(true, assuming(true, true))
assuming(true, *discharge(assuming(true, true)))
assuming(true, true)
*discharge(assuming(true, true))
true
qed
$ ./bin/ebfer eg/assume-discharge.ebfer
1/1 proofs verified.
3

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Apr 3

Best Star Trek crew, wrong answers only.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Apr 2

Whoah, this is exciting. I can write a function, and follow it with a proof that the function is commutative. The interpreter will check the proof before evaluating the function. There's nothing fancy going on under the hood - the interpreter is about 655 lines of Python code.

Interactive shell session showing an Ebfer program/development, and showing a command that checks the proof and runs the program (evaluates the main function).

$ cat eg/perim.ebfer
fun perim(X,Y) => add(mul(X,2), mul(Y,2))
fun main() => perim(50, 33)

rule mul_comm(mul(A, B)) => mul(B, A)
rule add_comm(add(A, B)) => add(B, A)

theorem
perim_comm(perim(X,Y)) => perim(Y,X)
proof
*perim_expand(perim(X,Y))
add(mul(X,2), mul(Y,2))
*add_comm(add(mul(X,2), mul(Y,2)))
add(mul(Y,2), mul(X,2))
*perim_contract(add(mul(Y,2), mul(X,2)))
perim(Y,X)
qed
$ ./bin/ebfer eg/perim.ebfer
1/1 proofs verified.
166
$

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Mar 29

Truchet Knotwork (2026) #DigitalArt #GenerativeArt #Gewgaw #Truchet #Tiling #TruchetTiling #CelticKnotwork #Aleatoric #ExperimentalArt catseye.tc/installation...

Two overlapping Truchet tilings on a beige or cream background: a dark green tiling of (randomly rotated) diagonal lines, and a dark red tiling of (randomly rotated) pairs of opposing quarter-circles. The overlapping order on each tile is randomly selected, giving a Celtic knotwork-type effect.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Mar 26

Bonfire of the Necessities (2026) #abstractart #digitalart #gimp3

An abstract digital picture, on a very dark brown or maroon background, in the centre, a collection of white simulated paint-brushed areas with black simulated paint-brushed bifurcating forms on top, with broken thin red and hot pink lines swirling about them; which all overlap, near the right, a hot pink and red vertical band, on which are many small black dots in two clusters.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Mar 25

Prototype of a #GenerativeArt idea: two Truchet tilings overlaid with a random overlaying order producing a Celtic Knotwork-type effect. This is a pretty crude prototype and I would want to work this up into a proper #gewgaw if I can find the time.

Random red diagonal-lines Truchet tiles overlaying random green semicircle Truchet tiles on an off-white background. The overlaying order is also random, producing a Celtic Knotwork-type effect.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Mar 21

Cat's Eye Technologies has officially released Lome, a markedly simple proof language. Lome has its roots in calculational style, but rather than placing justifications between proof terms, they are placed *on* them, as "decorators" - a more compact and explicit format. catseye.tc/article/News...

rule right_id(mul(X, e)) => X
rule left_id(mul(e, X)) => X
proof
mul(mul(a, e), mul(e, a))
mul(*right_id(mul(a, e)), *left_id(mul(e, a)))
mul(a, a)
qed

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Mar 19

Haunted Invention, or Inventively Haunted? (2025) #abstractart #digitalart #gimp3 #gestural #asemic #informel #doodle

One or more forest green, ink-like lines meander in a gestural fashion across a solid white background

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Mar 11

OK, I'm going to *guess* that what they're keeping mum about, is that Iran mined the living daylights out of the Strait of Hormuz on day one. Because Iran also understands the basics.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Mar 7

Hesitation is Just Around the Corner (2026) #digitalart #gimp3 #experimentalart #abstractart #gestural #informel #tangle #doodle #badart #makebadart

A collection of meandering thick translucent black traces, sometimes layered over previous traces and sometimes diverging, over a blue-greenish Perlin noise background with some saturated yellow artifacts showing through

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Mar 6

Poorly-Secured Harmonica Warehouse (Jan 2026) #digitalart #gimp3 #abstractart #geometricart #experimentalart #gestural #blackandwhite #discontinuity

An abstract black-and-white image consisting of a checkerboard pattern, with a white gestural curve meandering over the black squares and a black gestural curve meandering over the white squares, with each curve hidden on squares of the other colour.

Chris Pressey@cpressey· Mar 1

Traffish Jam (2026) #AbstractArt #DigitalArt #GIMP3 #Gestural #Nebula #BadArt #MakeBadArt